Several mid-sized solar businesses are experiencing rapid growth this year and looking to scale sustainably and effectively. They are also enjoying the uninterrupted flow of opportunities brought by the Inflation Reduction Act and the community solar sector.
Standard Solar, a national solar developer, financier and owner-operator of more than 350 MW of solar, has been improving and innovating to keep pace with the increased demand for solar, particularly in the community solar market, an area of expertise for the company.
In this edition of our Contractor’s Corner series, we speak with C.J. Colavito, VP of engineering at Standard Solar, about what makes the company unique, the most impactful technological advances and what the future holds for community solar.
How does your company stand out from competitors?
Standard Solar has deep expertise in solar DG development, engineering, construction, O&M and asset management. We have over a decade of experience in all of these areas. Because of this level of expertise, we are uniquely able to dig deep into the details to support our development partners and customers to solve problems and deliver successful projects. Another important characteristic of Standard Solar is that we pride ourselves on transparency backed up by fair and reasonable business practices. We do what we say we are going to do.
How has the IRA changed the way you do business?
The IRA is an excellent piece of legislation that strongly supports our industry. However, we have changed little about how we do business as a result. A few minor changes include adjusting our EPC and installation contracts to include provisions for prevailing wage and apprenticeship program requirements, working closely with our vendors to understand and identify opportunities to maximize domestic content, and including terms in our project acquisition agreements to share ITC bonus upside value with our development partners.
What’s one way you’ve cut soft costs at your company?
Standard Solar is in growth mode. In order to grow sustainably and maintain our quality and performance, we need to continually improve, document and develop standards and processes for how each job and task is done at our company. These standard operating procedures and process improvements have helped us to yield better efficiency of work, better quality and better sharing of information.
What solar technology improvement has made installations easier or better, and how?
Equipment manufacturers have consistently delivered useful innovations to improve solar PV systems my entire career. The most recent improvements have come from commercial string inverter manufacturers who have introduced inverters that can produce more than 200 kW each, while maintaining the relatively small size inverter and modularity. The higher power inverters allow us to use combiner boxes up to the 400-A level, which are more similar to what is used with central inverters. This reduces costs on labor and material for installation of the inverters and combiner boxes. When the larger inverters are configured in a virtual central layout with 1 to 3 MWAC of inverters grouped together, we can better reap the cost efficiency benefits of a centralized inverter approach as well as the flexibility and ease of replacement associated with string inverters.
PV module manufacturers continue to innovate with higher-efficiency cells and PV modules. It is ideal when the module efficiency improves while maintaining the same frame size and module form factor as the previous generation. This allows for an easy drop-in replacement of the PV module into existing designs and projects. Specifically, TOPCon PV cell technology has delivered a 5 to 7% improvement in module power without changing module dimensions. The higher efficiency PV modules enable us to get better power density in the same area, yielding larger PV systems. Alternatively, if we are not space constrained, the higher-efficiency PV modules reduce the amount of racking and labor needed to deploy the same DC power.
How have recent changes in community solar markets impacted your business?
Standard Solar is active in over 20 states nationwide. California’s developing community solar program has spurred a lot of activity and greenfield development for us in-house. We are also very busy with dozens of projects under construction in several key markets that have more mature programs, such as Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine and Maryland.
What’s your view of the future of the community solar sector?
I think the community solar sector will continue to lead the growth of the non-utility-scale space. There is a great need for more community solar, plenty of demand in many markets, and the projects are able to be deployed more efficiently at larger scale than typical behind the meter C&I. Community solar and other similar virtual metering state-level programs are essential to enabling the deployment of solar PV systems on less useful sites, like landfills and brownfields. I think community solar will only slow down in markets if one of the two following issues arises: 1) subscriber pools become too small due to lack of population density or because the vast majority of subscribers are already engaged or 2) the electrical distribution network can no longer accept more DER interconnections due to high DER penetration. We are already seeing markets such as Maine and Delaware with limited subscribers available, and we are seeing markets such as Massachusetts and New Jersey where the distribution network is unable to accept additional interconnections without very large upgrades or significant innovation and collaboration between utilities and solar developers.
